[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Page 15618]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           TEXT OF AMENDMENTS

  SA 1216. Mr. DURBIN (for Mrs. Boxer) proposed an amendment to the 
bill H.R. 2360, making appropriations for the Department of Homeland 
Security for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2006, and for other 
purposes; as follows:

       At the appropriate place, insert the following:

     SEC.   . STRENGTHENING SECURITY AT NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS.

       (a) Findings.--The Senate finds that--
       (1) A taped interview shown on al-Jazeera television on 
     September 10, 2002, included a statement that al Qaeda 
     initially planned to include a nuclear power plant in its 
     2001 attacks on the United States.
       (2) In 2001, David Kyd of the International Atomic Energy 
     Agency said that if a fully fueled large jetliner hit a 
     nuclear reactor ``then the containment could be breached and 
     the cooling system of the reactor could be impaired to the 
     point where radioactivity might well be set free.''
       (3) Dr. Edwin Lyman, a physicist and former scientific 
     director of the Nuclear Control Institute has noted that if a 
     nuclear power plant were hit by a large commercial passenger 
     jet, ``significant release of radiation into the environment 
     is a very real one.''
       (4) Operating nuclear reactors contain large amounts of 
     radioactive fission products that, if dispersed, could pose a 
     direct radiation hazard, contaminate soil and vegetation, and 
     be ingested by humans and animals.
       (5) According to the organization Three Mile Island Alert, 
     a nuclear power plant houses more than 1,000 times the 
     radiation that would be released in an atomic bomb blast, and 
     the magnitude of a single terrorist attack on a nuclear power 
     plant could cause over 100,000 deaths.
       (6) The federal government has offered Governors potassium 
     iodide pills to distribute to people living near nuclear 
     power plants in case of an attack, but no legislation has 
     passed to protect against an attack in the first place.
       (7) In the 108th Congress, the Senate Environment and 
     Public Works Committee approved bipartisan legislation to 
     improve nuclear plant security. No action was taken by the 
     full Senate.
       (8) Last month, the Senate Environment and Public Works 
     Committee again approved bipartisan legislation to improve 
     nuclear plant security.
       (b) Sense of the Senate. It is the sense of the Senate that 
     the Congress should pass legislation to assess the terrorist 
     threats at each nuclear power plant and to establish new 
     federal standards to protect against those threats.
                                 ______
                                 
  SA 1217. Mr. DURBIN (for Ms. Stabenow (for herself and Mr. Reid)) 
proposed an amendment to the bill H.R. 2360, making appropriations for 
the Department of Homeland Security for the fiscal year ending 
September 30, 2006, and for other purposes; as follows:

       On page 77, line 18, strike ``$2,694,300,000'' and insert 
     ``7,694,300,000''.
       On page 79, line 22, strike the colon and insert a period.
       On page 79, between lines 22 and 23, insert the following:
       (7) $5,000,000,000 for interoperable communications 
     equipment grants: Provided, That such amount is designated as 
     an emergency requirement pursuant to section 402 of H. Con. 
     Res. 95 (109th Congress):

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